


Reaping the Benefits

by Amythe3lder



Series: Irregular Pieces [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Coital, Pre-Relationship, mystrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 10:08:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4096945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amythe3lder/pseuds/Amythe3lder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><strong>Prompt: Autumn</strong><br/>He should not have answered the phone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reaping the Benefits

**Author's Note:**

> My love has concrete feet  
> My love's an iron ball  
> Wrapped around your ankles  
> Over the waterfall  
> "Heavy In Your Arms"-Florence + The Machine

Mycroft Holmes lay in the darkness (sweat still cooling) and struggled to keep his thoughts at bay, tried to distill the bliss of his body and the heaviness of his limbs into a tonic to drag his mind to sleep.

Alas, well-oiled cogs spun back into motion. He tightened his jaw and resigned himself to another night of silent self-beration.

He should not have answered the phone.

Perhaps if he had not had the mobile in his hand, debating whether or not to use it to dial up that very person, he could have withstood its sudden ringing without accepting the call. That would have settled the matter for a time. Gregory never left a message, and he would have waited weeks before attempting contact again. His bed partner was properly trained by now. That observation sat cold at the hollow of his throat.

He curled onto his side and did not press his face into that pillow where the older man had rested his head for just a moment before his muttered thanks had dropped to the ground to replace his scattered clothes on Mycroft’s bedroom rug and he’d disappeared back to his hotel room. He left the blanket bunched carelessly at the foot of the bed so he could pretend he was shivering from the nip in the air and not the memory of Greg’s teeth against his collarbone in those precious seconds when he could give everything and not be held accountable for it by anyone else.

Oh, God, this was not sustainable.

Outside, beyond the leaded windows, he heard the rain hit the earth with a whisper. In this place where he must allow a breath of honesty or else suffocate, he closed his eyes and imagined it falling on two umbrellas that sheltered those people he ought not to care for.

As a boy, Mycroft had heard how his parents had met: his father had kept the grounds on the campus where his mother held a position. The young man had toppled into love with the junior professor after sitting in on an impassioned mathematics lecture. He’d got her attention by building a trellis to model the Fibonacci sequence, trained wisteria and honeysuckle around the spiral frame. Mycroft’s own abilities in the garden lay in the autumn, not the spring.

He was the harvest and the culling, with a smile like the bitter farewell of waning sunlight. He was a tree that shook its own leaves loose, a blade that razed new growth, a bonfire that consumed all it was offered. His strength lay in being the icy wind that rattles the panes and foretells the reckoning, that spells doom in a meagre larder and a grey sky.

What good could he possibly do for anyone true?

It was a wonder that the weight of his distant affections had not crushed either unknowing recipient. This was better, surely. This was kinder.

(This was safer.)

**Author's Note:**

> Honorable mention: "Meet Me On the Equinox"-Death Cab For Cutie  
> And credit to my sis, Dysfunctionaldraught, for coming up with the title. It was too clever to not use.


End file.
